


Truesight

by cecilantro



Series: 100 Days Of Ficlets [19]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Background Beau/Jester, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-03 19:55:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14003523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilantro/pseuds/cecilantro
Summary: The world seems to be greyed out, and he recognises it by instinct and description as ethereal sight.This isn’t what surprises him.He has never, in all of his years, read about seeing the threads from the loom of fate.





	Truesight

They’re caught in another battle with human, or humanoid, enemies.  
  
Molly hates these battles the most. A monstrous enemy is easier to fight, is easier to remove the idea of life and family and love from. It is much harder to dehumanise someone looking at you with eyes that _someone_ has looked into before, and thought about how much they love them.   
Molly’s biggest weakness has always been his humanity, he can rarely bring himself to kill someone that could have a family waiting for them, no matter their crime.   
  
This is a bad choice.   
  
They were ambushed on the road again, but their enemies this time were no petty, unprepared criminals. Amongst the group of five enemies, there were two magic users, and at least one barbarian. The remaining two were skilled with their blades, as Molly found when one was pressed to his throat, and he didn’t even have the room to gulp nervously.   
Caleb had blasted that one with a Firebolt, and when they had flung their hands (sickle included) up to defend their face, Molly had ducked and rolled.   
  
“Thanks for that.” He tells Caleb as he lines up beside him and slashes his right, radiant sword across the back of his wrist.   
  
“Don’t thank me until it’s over.” Caleb responds, and saves Molly’s life for the second time that night by shoving him, hard, out of the way of a glistening white-blue bolt of energy that hits a tree behind them and spreads ice crystals along its bark. 

It seems to come from the leader of their attackers, who ducks out of Caleb’s answering Fire Bolt just in time. 

Molly presses his back to Caleb’s as they fight, Molly takes on the sickle-wielding melee fighter that had almost killed him earlier, Caleb fires off bolt after bolt of fire at their enemies. Fjord in locked in combat with the enemy barbarian, gesturing aggressively and taking the occasional falchion swipe when they rage too close to him.   
  
Beau and Jester are both tackling the other melee fighter, alternating between Beau’s tankish, darting blows, and Jester’s gaudy, distracting ones.   
  
Nott is not currently in Caleb’s line of sight, but he keeps seeing the occasional crossbow bolt flitting past or into an enemy. He crows a sound of pride and thanks as one shatters the shoulder of one of the magic users, making their summoned Chromatic Orb fling wide, scattering acid in a wild circle feet from any of The Mighty Nein.   
He catches the leader of the enemy band turn, and he screams even before he knows what’s going on.   
Nott falls, hard to the ground, the entire right side of her body (including her crossbow) encased in ice, she can’t even scream. Her eyes roll back and she’s gone, and Jester is from Beau’s side too, Caleb from Molly’s back. 

Jester vaults, uses Fjord as a step and it must be something he knows because he bows for her as she moves, light-footed, toward him and springs as though he is elastic. She skids to a landing next to Nott and roars in Infernal at the Sorcerer. Their eyes darken as the Infernal shreds into their mind, and then Caleb is there.   
He’s too close for a Fire Bolt. Instead, his rage fires down his arms to his hands, a sensation familiar, he taps his thumbs together. 

Fire erupts. 

In the moment before the whirlwind of flame begins, the Sorcerer meets Caleb’s eyes and there’s a wicked darkness there. 

They clap a hand to Caleb’s chest and he is too caught up in his revenge to resist the cold shock, his eyes screw closed, he finishes his incantation.   
The hand evaporates. To dust and ash, and once the Sorcerer is down, the rest of the enemy party seems to lose heart. 

 

Caleb opens his eyes and nearly shits his fucking pants.

 

The world seems to be greyed out, and he recognises it by instinct and description as ethereal sight.   
This isn’t what surprises him. 

He has never, in all of his years, read about seeing the threads from the loom of fate.

There are strings across the party, some thick as yarn, others thin as a strand of hair, he turns to where he knows Nott to be and steps, he follows a thread that seems to be sewn into his own heart, a bright green. It’s thick, embroidery thread, he traces it to Nott. There are other threads, too, but this thread is all he cares about now.

He kneels beside her, and where their connecting thread is green, the one that trails now from Caleb to Jester is twisted twin-cotton yellow and grey. Tri-strand, perhaps, the yellow seems to strengthen as he watches her set hands on Nott and whisper, and the ice melts away. Caleb strokes Nott’s hair as she gasps and sits and clings to him in the next breath, crackling about how she thought she was dead for sure this time. 

“Jester.” Caleb catches her with a tap to the wrist, “Thank you. This means a lot.” 

Jester beams at him, and it’s like he’s underwater and she isn’t. The yellow between them sprouts another hair-thin thread. Jester takes Nott from Caleb’s grip, gentle, and he hears her telling him to check in with Molly, because he was very worried. 

 

How long had he been lost in his own mind? 

 

Their enemies are downed and when Caleb stands, Mollymauk is on him. He gathers him up, a sudden assault, it’s like being trampled by a horse, and just as suddenly he is free again and wishing the horse would come back. 

He looks at the thread between himself and Molly. 

It’s as thick as his finger and bright, pulsating red.

 

The Truesight spell takes that moment to end, and the thread disappears with only a burning imprint on the back of Caleb’s eyes as proof it ever existed.  
  
Molly’s hands hover around him, his words a garbled mix of apologies, anger, and concern, begging for answers.   
  
Caleb is drained suddenly, like someone has slashed the bottom of a sack of grain, he spills onto the floor and Molly’s chest as he flops forward, the tiefling’s quick reflexes the only thing between Caleb and a broken nose when Molly catches him, two hands, arms under his and sliding, looping around Caleb’s waist. Molly finds him pawing gently at his upper arms, his shirt, and sinks slowly to the ground with him, heaves to flip Caleb onto his back and lay his head gently in his lap.   
He strokes his fingers through Caleb’s hair, and the wizard drops away instantly to sleep, he doesn’t remember feeling this safe without his alarm as he disappears.

 

He wakes up lying on Molly, but not in the same place or position as when he fell asleep. 

The moon is past its peak in the sky, he estimates that it’s around three AM. 

He’s half on Molly’s chest, now, and Molly has an arm loosely around his waist. When he lifts his head a little to look over his shoulder, he finds Fjord pressed as close to his back as possible. On Molly’s other side, Nott, then Jester and Beau, twined together. He lays his head back down on Molly’s chest and closes his eyes.   
He remembers the threads. 

They had alarmed him at the time, it was like being sunk in a deep pool of water, but now he _burns_ to know more about them. About the colours, about the thicknesses, he can make assumptions but he wants to _research_ .   
  
He begins to categorise the things he knows.   
  
His connection to Nott had been… green. He would usually attribute that to the fact that she’s a _goblin_ , but he had seen the other threads if not where they went. She was the only green one.   
He chalks it up on the mental board.   
  
The next was Jester’s, yellow-and-grey. When he had felt himself liken to her a little more, the yellow had grown stronger.   
  
He makes a mental note,   
_Bonds and emotions?_   
  
In which case, could yellow represent friendship? Green… for family, and grey for distrust. That would explain the half-grey, half-yellow thread he had seen, which he assumed now belonged to Beau. Fjord’s, then was yellow and streaked with red. Just a strand, maybe two, and about the same in thickness as Nott’s.   
  
So, if the colours represented the type of bond, could the thickness represent the strength of it?   
Nott’s ‘family’ bond and Fjord’s ‘friendship’ had both been embroidery thread thick. When Caleb had scouted his eyes across the group for a second or two, the yellow-red between Jester and Beau had been close to yarn, Jester and Fjord’s green easily as such.   
  
And Molly’s connection to him. Glowing, _thick_ , rope-like and red.   
  
It made sense to Caleb that this was romantic love.   
  
He’d had a _little, tiny, miniscule bit of a thing_ for Molly since day one. Just look at him! Whichever God put that one together used their highest quality resources.   
  
And that had developed, very quickly, into something stronger.   
Molly stirred under him, and Caleb stopped breathing. He held it, held still, like stone.   
  
Molly’s arm slides quickly up his body, fingers press to the soft of his throat.   
  
“Don’t. Fucking do that.” Molly growls, and Caleb draws in cold night air. Molly glides his arm back down, “Scared me, fuckin’, wizard.” it’s slurred, Caleb assumes he’s half asleep, and this is confirmed when Molly’s breathing slips back into the rhythm of slumber.

  
Caleb joins him.

**Author's Note:**

> Im emotionally drained today sorry it sucks, i might do a followup tho i am a big big fan of this uhhh,,, "oh truesight and you see the strings of fate"
> 
> ignore that the dude theyre fighting would have to be like level 11 and would decimate them. Just pretend. Preteeeeend.


End file.
